We struggled on together for about half-an-hour. Then Mac said that
he could go no farther, and Giulia and I lifted him out of the saddle
and placed him tenderly on the ground. I asked him if he were in much
pain; he said that he felt very little, but that his lower limbs were
becoming numbed.
"The end cannot be far off," he went on, "and, when I am gone, take my
rifle and cartridges, and put as great a distance as possible between
yourselves and the Berbers."
"Do not think of us," I replied, "think of yourself; you have but a
short time to make your peace with God."
He said nothing to me, but I saw his lips moving in quiet prayer. After
some time he said:
"Good-bye, my good comrades; it is nearly over."
Giulia was weeping, and there were tears also in my eyes. I pressed his
hand, and Giulia, bending down, kissed him on the forehead. A moment
after he ejaculated: "O Lord, have mercy." And at the words his gallant
spirit passed away.
We were now lonely indeed. In one morning Giulia and I had lost our
two companions--the two men who did not hesitate to risk their lives,
as they used to put it, for the comrade in trouble and the woman in
distress. The outlook that had been so favourable the day before was
now dark and gloomy. Two-thirds of our fighting strength had gone; but
that was not the worst: we missed even more the ruined Englishman's
stern manner and stout heart, the laughing Irishman's constant wit on
the march and steady earnestness in the fight. Both were good friends,
of totally different natures, yet equally sympathetic; each made up
for what the other lacked. One never minded the gloom that too often
sat upon the corporal's brow in listening to the ceaseless jesting and
careless laughter of the simple soldier; and when the fight came one
felt that Mac would care, and care well, for his share of it, but that
the Englishman, while working as a fighting man, was planning as our
chief.
People will say: Oh, but you were once sergeant-major, and why did
not you command rather than the corporal? Well, for two good reasons.
First, if I had once been sergeant-major, he had once been captain.
Second, somebody had to be close to Giulia in every fight, for reasons
that may be guessed--and who had a better right to be at her side than
I?
There was no time for us to bury poor Mac, even had I pick and shovel
for the work. Anyway, no soldier thinks much about where his body will
lie after death: no grave at all is as good as a place in a trench
where hundreds of others are pressing and crowding around. When you
have once seen a battlefield grave, where three or four hundred lie
like sardines in a tin, you will find little, if indeed any, poetry in
the words "God's acre." Not that the burial party should be blamed, be
it well understood. Oh no! they must think of the living, especially
the wounded, and in a hot climate quick burial is the only thing to
prevent a pestilence of the sun.
Giulia and I managed to go about twelve kilometres farther on our road
that day. I did not want to go so far, but she insisted. She knew,
as I did, that she was not in a fit state to travel such a distance;
but some fear of the Berbers who had killed our comrades had taken
possession of her heart, and she would not, nay, she could not, rest
until we were quite safe from further pursuit. But she could not hold
out very long; at last even to sit her horse when going at a mere
walking pace was too much for her strength, and she was compelled to
yield to my entreaties and to dismount and rest. Poor girl! she was
very nervous and excited. Even the struggles that ended in complete
success had tried her too much, and now she felt with tenfold anxiety
and apprehension the death of the two loyal, brave, and generous
comrades who had been so suddenly lost. And a woman always feels the
loss of a friend more than a man does, because a man can easily get
another, but a women must be always suspicious of those who tender her
friendship, lest there be poison in the gift.
That night we could set no guard. Both of us were weary in spirit and
in body. There was no one to relieve me if I watched, and Giulia could
not rest unless I was so near that her hand could always touch me. I
thought of a plan: it was to picket the horses so that there should
be no danger of losing them, and then to withdraw about four hundred
yards from the spot where they were placed. The horses might attract
enemies in the night, but if we were some distance away, we ought to
be in comparative safety. Giulia assented; and when I had settled the
horses for the night I helped her to a spot a good distance from them,
and after a little interval, during which Giulia wept and I comforted
her as best I could, we lay down to rest in the desert side by side. As
I was sleeping, as a soldier sleeps who has learned to rest with aching
body or even with aching heart, Giulia clasped me by the shoulder, and
brought me back to active thought and life.
"What! is there an attack?" And I tried for my rifle in the dark.
"No, no! oh no! it is not that. I am ill; oh, what shall I do!"
But I will not tell the story. The night wore on, and when dawn came
it was only to show me that the best of all my comrades, the comrade
who made life happy and a thing of joy, the woman who had loved and
trusted, ever true, ever unchanging, was about to pass out of my life
for ever. The end came shortly after the dawn. It was quiet, for poor
Giulia was worn out with all that she had gone through, and, when all
was over, Arab or Berber or robber of the road might take my life, and
I should not resist. What was the good of life since I had lost my love?
All that day I stayed quietly by the dead body of my dear one. I forgot
the horses; I forgot the danger of attack; I forgot all things save
that I was at last alone, really alone, in the world. I thought of
those whom I had loved and lost--Nicholas the Russian, the English
corporal, Mac; but every moment my thoughts reverted to the greatest
loss of all--the loss of her whose corpse, pale and bloodless, it is
true, but with an indefinable beauty of feature and expression, lay
quiet and still upon the sand.
In the evening I dug a grave with my bayonet, and gently, tenderly,
laid there to rest the remains of her who had loved me with so great a
love.
* * * * *
There is little more to be said. I had no difficulty in making my way
to Tangier. I was not molested, nor did I molest anyone. The only
thought in my mind was to get as far away as possible from Africa--the
land for me of so many chances and changes, of exquisite love and still
more exquisite sorrow. I was hopeless, heartless, not in the sense that
I was heartless to others--I was heartless only for myself.
From Tangier I crossed to Spain, and there found a relation at
Salamanca--one of those men who, studying for the priesthood, choose
the foreign colleges rather than Maynooth. He helped me with money to
reach Ireland, but from him, as from all others, I kept the true story,
the story, I may now say, of "twenty golden years ago."
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Legionary, by John Patrick Le Poer